Celebrating Marriage: 10 Reasons I Love Being Married to Craig

I wish I didn't feel any hesitation to put this out there for people to read, but I do.

We have single friends whom we honor.

We have friends whose marriages are brutal and broken.

We have friends whose marriage partners have died, and the hole in their lives is massive. 

We also have a marriage that is far from perfect,  because WE are far from perfect. 

Yet, perhaps it is because of these things, I write. 

Marriage was designed to be beautiful,  and, even in its imperfection, I want to celebrate the love of marriage. 

1. I was single for 30 years. I actually loved that life. But it gets lonely after awhile. Loneliness exists within marriage, too- but it's different.  I have My Someone. I love having My Someone. 

2. Have you ever lived with a hormonal woman? It ain't easy (so I hear🤣). But, 4 babies and several miscarriages later, my husband has survived my hormonal roller coaster,  and somehow, he has managed to love me through it. I love that he was my companion through it all, and went with me to every single early OB appointment- I am SO THANKFUL he was there for the hard ones. (We are both enjoying having my hormones a bit more stable again 🙃)

3. If you are a person of wildly passionate thoughts and ideas and emotions, I hope you have a stable person, somewhere, to help keep you grounded and balanced. Craig's name means "rock," and I love that he is my rock.

4. I love that our children run to him with shining eyes and big smiles, when he comes in the door.

5. If you know Craig,  you know that he may not be loud in a crowd, but he holds opinions that are stubbornly unswerving. I love that he has been willing to bend, ever so slightly, on things like occasionally driving a car instead of a truck, and drinking coffee (iced, but it's coffee!😉). 

6. Speaking of coffee, I lived the first 30 years of my life with the delusion that what married people do every morning is have great conversation over coffee. It has taken 10+ years to get there, but I love having someone to converse with over coffee. I'll gladly ice it! It's still not a daily thing for us, like it was (almost) for my parents,  to sit and have a long chat over coffee. But progress is progress!!

7. My favorite of Craig's shirts is the one that says, "Don't panic- Dad will fix it." As a homeowner when I was single, I considered writing a book "On Being My Own Handyman."  I love that my husband is capable of fixing just about anything that can be fixed with a little welding, a little warping, or a little wood. He makes it look so easy.

8. Touch is a touchy subject with me. I wasn't touched much for 30 years.  Sometimes, I like being touched; sometimes, I don't.  With four kids, by the time Craig comes in, there are days that every single one of my touch receptors is on fire, and I don't want to touch or be touched.  I love having access to touch when I need it; I also love that I'm allowed to say, "Not right now, please" when I need a break. I especially love having a foot warmer. 😁

9. Being married to a man who is able and willing to do just about anything for just about anyone is wonderful- and hard.  I love that he's that kind of man, even though I get kinda selfish about sharing him sometimes.  I have a whole new appreciation for, say, pastors' wives, who constantly share their husbands all around the community a whole lot more than I share mine.  I love that he's willing to help others when the opportunity arises- it's why we're here.

10. Craig and I are very different persons.  It's not a bad thing.  Both of us have expanded our minds and grown our hearts a little larger, because of the differences in our fields of knowledge and interests.  He reads more, sings more, and pulls the keys more often than he did 12 years ago.  I know a whole lot more about cattle and tractors and how things work than I did 12 years ago.  I love working with him in our meat business, because we sharpen each other's ideas- I work mostly with the marketing part of it, and he designs and builds heavy duty carts to haul the grills and freezers.  I love being married to my teammate, and I love that we get to each help the other become a better person.

After we became engaged, people came out of the woodwork to tell us that marriage is hard work.  I mean, they weren't wrong, because relationships just ARE that way.  Almost 12 years later, I'm still saying that LIFE is hard work, and I'm so thankful to have someone to do the hard things with.

And THAT is why I'm celebrating marriage.

p.s. Yes, I had Craig's permission before I said all this stuff about him 😉

Photo from our wedding day, August 25, 2012.

Many thanks to Portraits by Jeanna and all the others who helped preserve our memories from that day!

Criticism

 I'm digging up an old word sketch tonight.

Actually,  it's a song I wrote probably two decades ago. 

I don't remember the specifics of why I wrote these words, but every now and then, they echo through my heart.

...........

There are those who criticize

I cringe beneath condemning eyes

I want to run away and hide

Or scream, and tell how hard I tried 

Search me, oh God, and know my heart 

Search me, oh God, examine every part

Search me, oh God, and see if there be

Some wicked way in me

Opinions and expectations 

Can multiply life's frustrations

Whom should I please? What should I do?

Oh, God- I want to please you!!

Search me, oh God, and know my heart 

Search me, oh God, examine every part

Search me, oh God, and see if there be

Some wicked way in me

Word Jewelry, and foot-tapping insecurities

I want to write more. 

At this season of life, I don't really care if anyone reads what I write, and I don't care as much as I should care, what they think if they do stumble upon my words. I'm not really writing for anyone else; I'm writing for me. It's what I do for fun (I'm weird that way).

Some days, however,  I let myself wonder if I could get paid for my "word jewelry" (strings of words that have been fashioned into something of beauty and value). 

It's only when I start thinking about writing for other people that I start to feel insecure about my writing. While I typed that last sentence,  my left foot started tapping frantically.

I want to write for money, but I don't want to have to care about what people think about what I write. 

Solve that!!

Out of these insecurities,  I wrote this:

---------

If I would write

Would I write right?

Would the words be worth the read?

Would the reader wonder why I wrote,

Or read what I wrote, with wonder?

If I would write, why would I write?

And why would I write what I write?

Because the words in my head, they just might explode

If they're trapped there forever, with nowhere to go.

I can write what I cannot speak,

When I write, I can delete.

When my brain fires faster than my tongue can translate,

The mords get wixed up as they fly out the gate.

But as I write, the jibberish brainwave jello starts to mold,

I can leave it and come back 'til I get the story told.

I'm terrible at following the rules of the words-

There are so many, it's really absurd.

 

I Capitalize As I Please,

Because Naming Things is one of the Small Glees

Of life that I choose to savor,

At the risk of taking me out of favor

With the Word Lords.

I mix meters and metaphors and poetry forms.

(I also think forms should rhyme with worms.)

Who writes these rules, anyway?

Must I keep them? Who's to say?

Sometimes when I write, I pull out the stoppers.

I verb-alize nouns, and scandalize Propers.

I comma with Oxford, AP or, random.

Some things I write are really quite dumb.

 

But I write, 

Because the words I write might

Make someone's day bright

Or help someone see 

Something differently. 

But mostly,  

I write for me.

The End.

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